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Thursday 21 February, 2008
Gamelog entry #2
Gameplay
The second half of playing this game was actually more fun then the first half. The missions are pretty similar but they get a whole lot harder. Even though it got somewhat frustrating at times, the game was still really fun. In fact I enjoyed this game so much I saw myself playing 2-3 hours straight rather than the preferred 45 minute period. The harder the levels got the more you needed to invest your mind into several problem solving skills such conquering larger foes, jumping over each platform as an obstacle course, and timing your jump just right so you could very last star. Even though the storyline wasn't very complex, as it follows the typical Mario saves Peach storyline, there were many in-game options that made the game hard to turn off.
People who watched me play the game pretty much played the game with me. Every fault or success the people watching me were pretty much 100% around me. Most people were shouting commands such as "jump on this" or "step on that", but the energy was very much there. There was a lot of social interactions between myself and the friends watching, but it was fun because it brought back the old Nintendo days. It's somewhat easier to play when you don't have a bunch of people watching you play, but it's pretty interesting to see how so many people can be fixated on the success or failure of a digital character.
Design
The biggest innovative element this game uses is of course the use of a digital Mario functioning in a digital world for the first time. Instead of simply jumping and shooting fireballs, now Mario can flip, hurdle, punch, and kick his way through his enemies. Being able to control a 3-D Mario is extremely fun because he can interact with more options in his world and you have more room to pull off difficult maneuvers. This game was definitely the best Mario game and most of its success should be attributed to the use of 3-D graphics.
One of the things I would add to the game itself to make it more enjoyable would be to implement more Mario characters from previous games. Even though Yoshi did make a brief appearance in the game, it could've been very interesting to see how it would be to control Yoshi as an alternate character. When the Nintendo DS came out, a new version Super Mario 64 was made for the new portable system. What the new game did was implement the ability to control other characters such as Yoshi and Luigi. I was really excited about this game and found that it was just as fun maybe even a little more fun than the original. The only problem I had with the original game was that it didn't have enough characters to control, however the release of the DS version fixed that problem. I can say with confidence that it is definitely one of the best games ever made for the Nintendo or any other system for that matter.
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